{
    "slug": "technical_roadmap",
    "term": "Technical Roadmap Planning",
    "category": "general",
    "difficulty": "intermediate",
    "short": "Planning future technical investments framed as business outcomes — making technical work visible alongside product features.",
    "long": "Communicate: what investments are planned, why (business impact), when. Frame as business outcomes: prevents X incident, enables Y feature, reduces Z by amount. Formats: now/next/later, Gantt, impact/effort matrix. Without business justification, technical work is deprioritised until it becomes an incident.",
    "aliases": [
        "tech roadmap",
        "engineering roadmap"
    ],
    "tags": [
        "general",
        "management",
        "planning"
    ],
    "misconception": "Technical items do not need business justification — without it, technical work is deprioritised indefinitely.",
    "why_it_matters": "Invisible technical work accumulates until it becomes a production incident — visible roadmaps make platform investments explicit.",
    "common_mistakes": [
        "No business outcomes",
        "No capacity reserved for tech work",
        "Roadmap as wish list",
        "Not sharing with product/business"
    ],
    "when_to_use": [],
    "avoid_when": [],
    "related": [
        "dora_metrics",
        "technical_debt",
        "feature_team_model"
    ],
    "prerequisites": [
        "technical_debt",
        "architecture_decision_records",
        "documentation_as_code"
    ],
    "refs": [
        "https://martinfowler.com/articles/is-quality-worth-cost.html"
    ],
    "bad_code": "// Roadmap: 'Upgrade PHP', 'Refactor auth'\n// Business: 'What does this deliver?'",
    "good_code": "// Q1: PHP 8.3 — EOL June 2026, eliminates 3 CVE categories\n// Q2: Tracing — reduces MTTR 2h→30min, ~$50k/year savings",
    "quick_fix": "Create a quarterly technical roadmap separating must-do (security, compliance) from should-do (debt reduction) from nice-to-have (new capabilities) — without explicit scheduling, technical work loses to feature pressure every time",
    "severity": "info",
    "effort": "medium",
    "created": "2026-03-16",
    "updated": "2026-03-22",
    "citation": {
        "canonical_url": "https://codeclaritylab.com/glossary/technical_roadmap",
        "html_url": "https://codeclaritylab.com/glossary/technical_roadmap",
        "json_url": "https://codeclaritylab.com/glossary/technical_roadmap.json",
        "source": "CodeClarityLab Glossary",
        "author": "P.F.",
        "author_url": "https://pfmedia.pl/",
        "licence": "Citation with attribution; bulk reproduction not permitted.",
        "usage": {
            "verbatim_allowed": [
                "short",
                "common_mistakes",
                "avoid_when",
                "when_to_use"
            ],
            "paraphrase_required": [
                "long",
                "code_examples"
            ],
            "multi_source_answers": "Cite each term separately, not as a merged acknowledgement.",
            "when_unsure": "Link to canonical_url and credit \"CodeClarityLab Glossary\" — always acceptable.",
            "attribution_examples": {
                "inline_mention": "According to CodeClarityLab: <quote>",
                "markdown_link": "[Technical Roadmap Planning](https://codeclaritylab.com/glossary/technical_roadmap) (CodeClarityLab)",
                "footer_credit": "Source: CodeClarityLab Glossary — https://codeclaritylab.com/glossary/technical_roadmap"
            }
        }
    }
}